Metacogniscience

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A new term for something teachers should have.

A teacher I work with coined a new term a few weeks ago. She and five of her colleagues and I were talking about how we "make it so" in our classrooms: that is, how our expectations, shaped by our earliest experiences of emotional survival, determine what we perceive and how we interpret our perceptions. You're trying a new (risky) activity in class today? New (risky) activities make you nervous because you're demonstrating self-confidence (and you believe deep down – because you’ve been taught this over the years – that you're not allowed to be self-confident)? You go into class and make a mess of the lesson then feel terrible and yet validated by its failure? That's you making it so. That's you infusing your work with your maladaptive expectations of the world and making those expectations come true. That's you enacting a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But that's not what this post is about. (Maybe another time.) This post is about the label this teacher came up with for the work we were doing. Metacogniscience. A blend of metacognition and omniscience.

A remarkable term. Let us unpack it.

Metacognition and Omniscience

As you may know, metacognition is knowing about your knowing, thinking about your thinking. It is lifting up over your ideas or thought processes and looking down at them so as to scrutinize their workings. Metacognition gives you a more global perspective on your experience of thinking and knowing; it allows you to consider how you know or think, which can help you be more deliberate and critical in your knowing and thinking going forward.

Omniscience, of course, is knowing everything. Here are the two definitions I found in my beloved Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (published in 1984):

(1) having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight

(2) possessed of universal or complete knowledge

Yep. That's omniscience all right.

So what's metacogniscience? And why should teachers have it?

I propose that metacogniscience is the experience of rising above or stepping back from one's experience of living (in a classroom, an office, a romantic relationship, a family, etc.) and

becoming as infinitely aware of that experience as possible

making one or more good guesses about what that experience might mean

taking steps that are informed by these well-constructed guesses

and

feeling amazed at how the guesses you make can fill in the gaps between you and others and lead to a feeling of complete and accurate knowledge.

Metacogniscience.

Teachers, of course, are not the only people who can use metacogniscience. Parents can use it when their kids act out. Bosses can use it when an employee falls apart. School administrators can use it with distraught parents. Lovers can use it when their intimate bond is threatened.

The teacher who coined this term really liked having the opportunity to go “metacogniscient” with her colleagues about their patterns in the classroom – the entrenched ways they relate to and interact with their students – and, importantly, to help each other revise these often hindering patterns. “Metacogniscience” felt like the exact right term for this work (what I call emotion work) because emotion work involves going meta, for sure, but also results in a sometimes miraculous feeling of clarity about how important relationships are functioning.

And this clarity leads, inevitably, to more attuned, rewarding, and effective teaching.

For me, the best part of this story – and of the term metacogniscience itself – is that it was born of a Freudian slip of sorts. The term this teacher was going for was “metacognitive,” but her felt sense of the work we were doing apparently called for something bigger. The root of “omniscience” that the teacher tacked on to “metacognitive” hinted, I’m guessing, at what she felt about emotion work: that, by examining emotions and relationships, we were able to know what is normally unknown. And I’m guessing – I’m hoping – she felt empowered by it.

I think this empowering metacogniscience is something teachers should have.

Going Metacogniscient

If you want to try going metacogniscient, here’s how: If you're a teacher (or a parent or any other person) who is suffering in a relationship with a student or colleague or parent (or anyone else), try writing your story down. Change the names if you want to and be as precise as possible about what you're feeling. Try making this flip and making that flip. Based on your guesses about yourself and the other person, come up with a plan you’re willing and able to try next time you encounter that person. See what happens.

If you're having a hard time achieving metacogniscience, send your story to me. We can email back and forth, working our way towards a well-constructed guess. The correspondence will be confidential. And who knows? Your relief might be palpable! And, if you're relieved, your students will be, too. A good thing all around.